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We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special." Stephen Hawking.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

What came first ……, God or Morality!

<– Chimps and bonobos and other primates clearly show empathy with others who are suffering.

COLUMN By LEE DYE

One of the world’s leading primatologists believes his decades of
research with apes answers a question that has plagued humans since the
beginning of time.
Are we moral because we believe in God, or do we believe in God because we are moral?Frans de Waal
argues in his latest book that the answer is clearly the latter. The
seeds for moral behavior preceded the emergence of our species by
millions of years, and the need to codify that behavior so that all
would have a clear blueprint for morality led to the creation of
religion, he argues.
Most religious leaders would argue it’s the other way around: Our
sense of what’s moral came from God, and without God there would be no
morality.
But this is a column about science, not religion, so it’s worth
asking if de Waal’s own research supports his provocative conclusions,
documented in the newly released book, “The Bonobo and the Atheist.”
Just the title answers one question: he is an atheist, although he
disparages the efforts of other atheists to convince the public to
abandon all beliefs in the supernatural. Religion serves its purpose, he
argues, especially through the rituals and body of beliefs that help
strengthen community bonds.
De Waal is a biology professor at Emory University and director of the Living Links Center
at the Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta. He is widely regarded as one
of the world’s top experts on primatology, especially the sometimes
violent chimpanzees and their fun-loving sexually obsessed cousins, the
bonobos, sometimes called the forgotten apes because they have become so
rare.
Through years of research all over the world, de Waal has reached
these basic conclusions: Chimps and bonobos and other primates clearly
show empathy with others who are suffering. They have a sense of
fairness, they take care of those in need, and they will share what they
have with others who are less fortunate.
Those and other human-like characteristics, that have been clearly
documented by other researchers as well, at least show they have some
grasp of morality. It doesn’t mean they are moral — especially chimps,
which can be very violent — but they have the “basic building blocks”
for morality, de Waal argues.
Chimps, he says, “are ready to kill their rivals. They sometimes kill
humans, or bite off their face.” So he says he is “reluctant to call a
chimpanzee a ‘moral being.’”
“There is little evidence that other animals judge the
appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves,” he
writes. Yet, “In their behavior, we recognize the same values we pursue
ourselves.
“I take these hints of community concern as a sign that the building
blocks of morality are older than humanity, and we don’t need God to
explain how we got to where we are today,” he writes.
Our sense of morality, he continues, comes from within, not from
above. Many activities he has witnessed show that apes feel guilt and
shame, which also suggest a sense of morality. Why should anyone feel
guilty if they don’t know the difference between right and wrong?
For example, Lody, a bonobo in the Milwaukee County Zoo, bit the hand
— apparently accidentally — of a veterinarian who was feeding him
vitamin pills.
“Hearing a crunching sound, Lody looked up, seemingly surprised, and released the hand minus a digit,” de Waals writes.
Days later the vet revisited the zoo and held up her bandaged left
hand. Lody looked at the hand and retreated to a distant corner of the
enclosure where he held his head down and wrapped his arms around
himself, signs of both grief and guilt.
And here’s the amazing part. About 15 years later the vet returned to
the zoo and was standing among a crowd of visitors when Lody recognized
her and rushed over. He tried to see her left hand, which was hidden
behind the railing. The vet lifted up her incomplete hand and Lody
looked at it, then at the vet’s face, then back at the hand again.
Was he showing shame and grief? Or was it fear of a possible
reprisal? The ape at least realized he had done something wrong, de Waal
argues, showing the seeds of moral behavior.
There are scores of other examples showing deep grief over a dying
colleague and compassion for a mother ape that has lost her young and
care for young apes that have lost their parents. All those things are
signs of what we would call unmistakable morality, if the subjects were
humans, not apes.
“Some say animals are what they are, whereas our own species follows
ideals, but this is easily proven wrong,” de Waals writes. “Not because
we don’t have ideals, but because other species have them too.”
When an ape expresses grief or guilt or compassion he is living out
the blueprint for survival in a culture that is becoming more complex,
and possibly more dangerous. He is acting from within, not because he
believes in God who defined right and wrong. De Waal puts it this way:
“The moral law is not imposed from above or derived from
well-reasoned principles; rather it arises from ingrained values that
have been there since the beginning of time.”
He cites at least one instance when those “ingrained values” led to
action among bonobos that seems like a divine solution to a nasty
problem that confronts human society around the world.
Bonobos, according to his research, know how to avoid war.
Over and over he has seen neighboring bonobo colonies gather near a
common border as the males prepare to do battle. Ape warfare can indeed
be violent. But when the bonobos are ready to fight, the females often
charge across the boundary and start making out with both genders on the
other side.
Pretty soon, the war has degenerated to what we humans would call an
orgy, after which both sides are seen grooming each other and watching
their children play.
So an orgy is moral? Maybe these guys understand it really is better to make love, not war.